


which gleams on shores afar

by blackkat



Series: MerMay Drabbles [7]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe - Pirate, M/M, Rescue, light humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25501780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: “Great,” Sinker says, unimpressed. “If the ship’s haunted, we’re definitely torching it.”
Relationships: Sinker/Jon Antilles
Series: MerMay Drabbles [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1727092
Comments: 23
Kudos: 534





	which gleams on shores afar

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: Jon/Sinker pirates! Maybe something on how Sinker got that name

“Going to send this one to the depths without mercy?” Boost jokes, hanging over the rail.

Sinker rolls his eyes, but leaves Comet at the helm and comes to join him, eyes on the drifting merchant ship they’re pulling alongside. “I only do that if they don’t surrender, and I don’t think that will be a problem this time.”

The merchant’s deck is completely empty as the ship wanders. Sinker can't see any trace of movement, can't see corpses or any sign of a struggle, and it prickles down his spine, not quite alarm, but—wariness. The recognition of something out of place, something strange. Sinker doesn’t have be a superstitious old soul to feel it, either.

“No lifeboats,” Boost says quietly, scanning the ship.

“No sign of attack, either.” Sinker checks the sails, but they're still whole, even if they’re hanging slack right now. “Disease?”

“There'd be bodies on the deck, wouldn’t there?” Boost tips one shoulder in a shrug, and asks, “Torch it?”

“No,” Sinker says after a long moment. “If it’s something the admiral needs to know about, I’d rather not have been the one to burn the evidence.”

Boost winces. “Wolffe’s had a bad enough month of it,” he agrees, a little amused but mostly rueful. “Tarkin’s been on his tail the whole time.”

Not for much longer, Sinker is sure. Once Wolffe starts getting annoyed, any Navy man chasing him is in for a rough time. There are whispers, too, that Wolffe’s made some sort of deal with a deep sea spirit, but—Sinker has no idea if it’s true, and no cause to ask Wolffe just yet.

If it is, it’s not the most surprising thing Sinker’s seen at sea, but it’s still Wolffe asking for help, which is noteworthy in its own right.

“Let’s deal with our problems and let Wolffe deal with his,” he says dryly, and straightens, watching as the deck of the merchant ship comes clear. It’s empty, even more so than it looked from a distance, and Sinker feels that same prickle of unease down his back, even as he tilts his head. “Mortar, a line.”

From the ratlines above, Mortar frees a line for him, then one for Boost. “Want a party formed behind you, Captain?” he calls down.

“No,” Sinker says, because if it _was_ disease that killed everyone aboard, he’d rather not expose his men to it. “Boost is smelling particularly ripe today. I don’t want to inflict that on anyone else in close quarters.”

Mortar laughs, while Boost pulls a face and kicks Sinker in the ankle. “I went swimming in the last cove we anchored in,” he complains.

“Two weeks ago,” Sinker says mercilessly, checks that his sword is loose in its sheath, and leaps up onto the railing, grabbing the line. A hard leap carries him across the gap, and he lands hard, but straightens, quickly knotting the line to the merchant’s railing as Boost lands beside him.

“Took most of the water,” Boost observes, eyeing the barrels at the far end of the deck. “But they left the full one. Too heavy for the lifeboats, probably.”

Which means they had plenty of time, or at least enough, before whatever drove them off the ship did so. Not a storm, with the lack of damage, or a fight. Not disease, and with that much water it probably wasn’t starvation.

“Great,” Sinker says, unimpressed. “If the ship’s haunted, we’re definitely torching it.”

Boost stays close behind him as he makes his way in a loop of the deck, then up to the upper deck. The captain’s cabin stands open, door swinging freely, and the interior has been meticulously stripped, everything necessary or valuable moved. Given the size of the chest against one wall, Sinker’s willing to bet that not all of it was taken, but the navigator’s equipment is all conspicuously absent. They definitely left, rather than being killed, and Sinker eyes the spot where the logbook should be and feels his stomach twist.

“Below deck,” he says quietly, and Boost, clearly able to feel the same eerie sense that Sinker can, nods silently and follows him to the hatch.

Unlike the captain’s cabin, this one is tightly barred. There's extra reinforcement, even—an X of boards has been nailed across the hatch, blocking it from swinging out, and Sinker eyes the barrier with an unpleasant certainty settling in his stomach. Whoever was on this ship, they locked something in their hold, and it spooked them so badly they abandoned ship rather than let it out again.

“Sithing hells,” Boost mutters. “Torch it?”

“No,” Sinker says, maybe a little stubbornly, but—he sails with _Wolffe_. The stubbornness is catching. “I want to know what’s down there.”

“ _What_?” Boost demands incredulously. “Captain, you're _insane_.”

“Maybe,” Sinker mutters, willing to allow that, and jerks his head at Boost. “These don’t look all that tight. Help me pull them loose.”

“We’re about to be the next ghost ship old sailors whisper about in pubs,” Boost mutters, but he scrounges around in a crate for a moment, then comes up with a prybar and sets to helping Sinker tear the boards off the door. They come up easily, hastily done, and Sinker is willing to bet it was an afterthought, something to give the crew enough time to leave, even if it wasn’t meant to hold.

When the last board comes free, the door gives a low creaking groan, then swings open of its own accord. There's darkness beyond, broken by a single, fluttering lamp that’s almost out of oil, and Sinker feels a tug behind his breastbone, sharp and almost painful drawing him on.

“Boost,” he says, without looking away. “Go back to the ship. Get some men over here and see if we can't get that barrel of water onto our deck.”

“Sinker—” Boost starts, warning, but Sinker gives him a mild look, one brow raised.

“Ship. Now,” he says calmly. “That’s an order.”

Boost groans. “You're going to get yourself killed, Captain, and I'm going to have to explain it to Wolffe,” he complains, but he shoves his pistol into Sinker’s belt and steps away. “Don’t get eaten.”

“I won't,” Sinker promises, though he has no idea whether that’s true or not. He waits where he is, eyes still on that flickering lamp, until the sound of Boost’s boots fades, the rope creaks. Then, carefully, Sinker steps past the downed boards, pushes the door wide, and follows the narrow hallways down.

All the other doors are tightly closed, and the lone lamp is the only source of illumination. Sinker plucks it off its hook as he passes, then pauses halfway down.

The bunkrooms are to the right, but there's no draw from that direction. From the left—

The brig, Sinker thinks, and breathes in slowly.

His fingertips barely brush the door before it’s swinging open, perfectly silent. Sinker grimaces, and his heart is beating too fast, every muscle tensed for a blow that hasn’t come yet, but he still pushes into the tiny brig, taking in the iron bars that wall off the back half of the room, the chain and padlock looped around the door in addition to the basic lock. There's a small table, and he places the lantern on it, then tilts his head and says, “That was a big overreaction for one prisoner, don’t you think?”

The man sitting in the cell, propped against the back wall, lifts his head. He’s wearing a cloak, dark and enveloping, and the lamplight catches strangely in his eyes, makes them burn a shade of blue that human eyes shouldn’t be. Still, he doesn’t move as Sinker approaches the bars, just watches.

And then, quiet, just a little hoarse, he asks, “Was it?”

Sinker braces his elbows against the chain, leans forward, and he can't help but smile. “I think it was,” he says. “Did they fish you out of the ocean, or were you a stowaway?”

“They fished me out,” the man admits, and leans forward. He still doesn’t remove his hood, but his eyes settle on Sinker, unwavering. “Their lines went too deep.”

That’s about what Sinker was assuming. He snorts, shaking his head, and draws Boost’s pistol. The man tenses, coiled tension snapping into being, but Sinker doesn’t even glance at him. He presses the pistol to the lock, turns his face away, and fires.

The report of the gun is deafening in the small space, and the smell of powder is overwhelming. But when Sinker gives the chain a sharp tug, the lock falls away, and he pulls the chain away, then swings the door open.

“Need help to get back to the water?” he asks politely.

The man stares at him for a long, long moment, and then slowly, carefully inclines his head. “Please,” he says quietly.

Sinker steps over coils of dark scales scarred with silver, leading up to a human torso. “You always have a tail?” he asks, a little amused.

“Not always. But they pulled me up before I can change, and my magic is in the water.” The man watches him closely, and when Sinker kneels down beside him, he tilts his head. “Your name?”

“You can call me Sinker,” Sinker says mildly, because he knows well enough not to give his name away to a creature he doesn’t understand. “Yours?”

“You can call me Jon.” There's a hint a of mouth beneath the shadow of his hood, a faint curl like humor, and Sinker laughs a little.

“Quite the pair,” he says, and leans in. it feels odd to slide his hand under where a human’s knees would be and only feel slick scales, soft to the touch, but it’s not unpleasant. The arms that curl around his neck are human, anyway, and the breath Jon takes as Sinker lifts him off the brig floor is human too.

There's too much tail to manage, but Sinker steps carefully to avoid the dark, feathery fins as he makes his way back up towards the surface.

“Can I ask that you not take things out on my crew?” he asks, passing through the darkness and back towards the light spilling through the hatch. “We can deal with the navy. Sea gods are a bit beyond our skillset, though.”

There's a low, soft sound of humor against Sinker’s throat. “You already have a sea god watching over you,” Jon says. “Plo Koon isn't one even I would cross.”

Sinker makes a mental note to corner Wolffe and shake answers out of him. And then another to sit down and consider that _even I_ some time later. Maybe when he’s safely back on dry land and can afford to panic over it just a little. “Thank you,” he says instead, because being polite to the sea god is probably a good idea regardless of his answer.

A pause, and then, quiet, Jon says, “I wouldn’t have harmed your crew even without his protection. I'm in your debt.”

“You're really not,” Sinker says quickly, and carries Jon out into the light. Pauses, acutely aware of Boost’s sudden, furious cursing on the other ship, and tries to figure out how to do this. He doesn’t want to just…dump Jon over the rail. That seems like a bad idea all around. “If I put you on the deck, can you get back in the water?”

“Of course.” Jon loosens his grip, and when Sinker carefully lowers him down to the deck beside the railing, he pushes up, catching the wood in one hand and rising. Hauls himself up onto it, that long, curling tail showing flashes of oil-slick colors in the sunlight, and then reaches up to brush his hood back.

He has a scarred face, a fighter’s face. And his eyes are still glowing, even in the sunlight, a perfect and unearthly blue.

“Thank you, Sinker,” he says, and a hand goes to his throat, pulls. The plain black cord comes free, and he reaches out, presses it into Sinker’s palm. Meets his startled gaze, and says, “If you need me. Give it one drop of blood and I’ll come.”

Sinker breathes in, breathes out. Curls his fingers around what feels like a carved tooth, and says, light, “Careful saying things like that. You're handsome enough that I might reinterpret _need_ in ways you won't agree with.”

Surprise flickers across Jon's face, then embarrassment. He smiles, ducking his head a little, and says, “I would. Agree with them. If you ever wanted.”

Sinker freezes, brain going absolutely blank.

Jon takes one look at his face, goes red, and then turns, ducks, and throws himself over the side of the ship and straight into the ocean.

Well, Sinker thinks, several dazed moments later. That’s—something. He propositioned a god and walked away not just intact, but…maybe with an agreement.

Even if Jon did fling himself back into the sea in the immediate aftermath.

Something to work on, Sinker decides, and ties the cord around his neck.

He looks forward to it, actually.


End file.
